The two annual meetings will mark the unveiling of China’s latest five-year plan, which calls for a shift away from an economy based on exports and massive public works to one powered by consumer spending.

Foreign economists and political leaders say the change will be a critical part of the effort to rebalance global trade. In China, it is seen as crucial to sustaining the country’s economic growth and the party’s unchallenged rule.

The uncertainty is whether the leadership can pull it off. The last five-year plan, issued in 2006, also proposed measures to boost incomes in an effort to restructure the economy.

In the end, however, exports and public projects revved up the economy, and the gross domestic product was 10.3 percent higher in 2010 than in 2009, well above the government’s target. Meanwhile, consumer spending’s share of the G.D.P. plummeted almost 10 percentage points from 2000 to 2009, to 35.6 percent — roughly two-thirds the level in many Asian nations, and half of that in the United States.